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Re: HID group buy

Why are you guys encouraging a modification that blinds other drivers and creates a dangerous situation for EVERYONE on the road?

Because they either don't know, don't care, or both. Or, they want to join the Inconsiderate Narcissists club.

Originally Posted by Xuryfluous

HID's only create a dangerous situation when they are in an improper housing. If they are in a projector there is nothing wrong with running HID's, and they do improve visibility at night. Luckily my bike came with projectors so it was a no brainer for me. I do agree that if you are planning on going the HID route you should get a projector installed in the housing so that you aren't blinding everyone you drive by. There are even sites out there where you can buy what you need to retrofit a projector, or send them your headlights and they will install it for you. http://www.bkmoto.com/ comes to mind

The only proper light for HID lamps is one that was designed for them. If your projector wasn't designed for HID's then it won't work. You might think it's working, but it's not. There are no motorcycles with OEM HID's available in Canada. HID headlamps require auto leveling and cleaners. This means that those aftermarket projectors are also illegal (besides the colours being illegal).

Originally Posted by jeffjones

Only bad thing about projectors on bikes is when you lean into a corner the cut-off works against you and pretty much makes it a blind corner.
Watch the blind spot in the corner at around the 33sec mark in this video

This video demonstrates the problem. HID lamps generate in the neighbourhood of 3 ~ 4 times the lumens per watt of tungsten halogen lamps. This means your head light needs to deal with 3 times the amount of light. In the video we can see that this set-up is doing a very poor job dealing with all the light; the near ground is grossly over lit. The camera is compensating for all the light to the point we can see nothing beyond the cut-off. Even though there is also 3 times the light above the cut-off we can't see anything. Our eyes compensate in the same fashion. People who have HIDs think they're seeing more because they see so much in the near ground, but their vision is actually impaired for distance.
In city driving you might not notice as much if there is good street lighting. In the country it becomes very dangerous. In the country while it's raining you will only see a few feet in front of the vehicle.

Originally Posted by daught

The most blinding cars on the road are the ones with stck HIDs. Acuras are the worst. Improperly aimed headlights are second, with or without HID.

This is not Acura's fault. Acuras have shipped with projectors for many years now, but only the last few years with HIDs. They are different systems. The lights you are complaining about have no doubt had HIDs installed in lights designed for halogen bulbs.

There seems to be a basic misunderstanding about projector headlights; it's true that most (virtually all) HID headlights are projectors, it is not true however that all projectors are designed for HIDs.

If you get a chance sometime, compare a tungsten halogen bulb to a HID burner; The light kernels are of a different shape, a different size, often in a different orientation and a different colour. A lot more science and engineering goes into your headlights than sticking in an illegal non-standard counterfeit HID lamp and expecting it to work.

Re: HID group buy

Originally Posted by daught

Wow you found a few examples of shitty installs on the internet. Congrats. You can find a shitty example of anything out there.

Sadly 95% of the examples on the road are horrible ones. HID's belong in a projection housing only. Anything else spreads the beam and is a hazard. As said above, rock, hammer, with any luck a tree.... anything to fix those idiots driving down the road with blinding set ups.